1. Which bird is the symbol of the RSPB? AN AVOCET
2. Which racecourse is on the South Downs between Portsmouth and Brighton?
GOODWOOD
3. What made Milwaulkee famous? BREWING
4. In TV cartoons, who did Pixie and Dixie continually torment? MR JINKS
5. What crime in America have Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolsosz got in common?
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENTS
6. Minsk is the capital city of which European country? BELARUS
7. Which poison (and heart drug) is obtained from the foxglove plant? DIGITALIS
8. Which cigarettes used to have a picture of ‘Old Joe’ on the packet? CAMEL
9 When might it be possible to see ‘Bailey’s Beads’? DURING A SOLAR ECLIPSE
10 A number of English football grounds have a Kop End with steep terraces.
The word is derived from a word for an isolated hill - in what language?
DUTCH / AFRIKAANS
11 At which film festival is the Golden Bear awarded? (The bear is the city’s symbol)
BERLIN
12 Which Greek philosopher was condemned to death and made to drink hemlock?
SOCRATES
13 Which 18th century poem was used by Beethoven in his 9th Symphony?
‘ODE TO JOY’
14 Who were the two stars of the film ‘The Bucket List’? (2-part answer) MORGAN
FREEMAN and JACK NICHOLSON
15 In which northern Scottish castle were Madonna and Guy Ritchie married? SKIBO
16 If a German car has the word ‘Kompressor’ on it, what does it mean? TURBO /
TURBOCHARGED
17 What is gneiss ? A TYPE OF (metamorphic) ROCK
18 Who wrote the screenplay for the film ‘Shirley Valentine’? WILLIE RUSSELL
19 Aided by the now-neglected Rosalind Franklin, what code did Francis Crick and
James Watson decipher? DNA
20 What language does the word ‘yoghurt’ come from? TURKISH
21. Where is ‘The Honest Toun’ in Scotland? MUSSELBURGH
22. In World War 2, what did airmen call their inflatable life jacket, after a
pneumatic blonde actress? MAE WEST
23. From which particularly odd source is the exclusive Sumatran coffee Kopi
Luwak obtained? FROM THE BACKSIDE OF A CAT – it eats the beans and
they are ‘processed’
24. In 1995, Mississippi was the last American state to officially abolish what?
SLAVERY
25. In 1869, what famous set of information did Dmitri Mendeleev produce?
THE PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS
26. Who was the first non-European to win the Tour de France? GREG LEMOND (USA)
27. In ‘The Simpsons’, who is the school caretaker? GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE
28. How many countries border the Baltic Sea? NINE
29. What is the French drink Calvados made from? APPLES
30 Found in front of large country houses, what was a sunken ditch and wall
called? It kept animals from the garden while allowing views beyond it A ‘HAHA’
31 Who wrote the children’s Christmas-time story of the ‘Tailor of Gloucester’?
BEATRIX POTTER
32 Which Scottish football team are nicknamed ‘The Bully Wee’? CLYDE
33 Born in Pittenweem, who was called ‘the 6th Rolling Stone’ and played on many
of their hit records, but was considered too conventional to appear on stage?
IAN STEWART
34 Which old Scottish poem begins ‘The King sits in Dunfermline toun, drinking the
blude-red wine’ THE BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENS
35 Next to which UK city would you cross the Avon Gorge on the Clifton
Suspension Bridge? BRISTOL
36 If you have two X chromosomes, what are you? FEMALE
37 In which decade were the books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy first published?
THE 1950s
38 Ada Lovelace, probably the world’s first computer programmer, was the
daughter of which famous poet? LORD BYRON
39 In olden times, in which months in general were you told to avoid eating
oysters? MONTHS WITH NO ‘R’ IN THEIR NAME / SUMMER/ WARM MONTHS
40 What was Istanbul called before it was called Constantinople? BYZANTIUM